Ultimate Ninja Boy Naruto!
by Lousy Poet Automaton
Summary: Sasuke has left, seeking power and new experiences! But Naruto's struggles go on. How well can their partnership work separated in time and space? Naruto is plagued by failings minor and major - will his ambitions ever become more than just dreams?
1. Chapter 1

**The Ultimate Partnership!**

Having faced a harsh childhood and with an even harsher future ahead of him, can our young hero power-up with the aid of lovely babes? Action and intense dramatic exchanges!

A young, innocent, handsome, tall boy with golden blond hair and eyes of stormy blue holds a dark secret. A secret that leaves him hated and loathed!

People on the street have their young ones look away while they scowl and curse at him! Sometimes, rocks might strike him in the head and he'll turn only to see their condescending smirks of acid disdain.

He is so noble though! He does nothing but train hard in ninja high school and work hard at his part-time job at the garbage dump. He can afford only the cheap but warm and yummy food of the ramen stand run by his childhood friend, the stunningly beautiful Ayame.

"Oh, Naruto! How are you doing?"

"Just great," said he, with a most winning and charming smile that glowed with the pure intensity of his earnest hopes and dreams, "no problems here! And it's pay day today. With the economy and all, I'm so glad the boss is willing to keep me on..."

Ayame muttered to one side, "That's only because you work for half the money and you never take sick days..."

"What's that?"

"Oh, nothing!"

Hands blurring with such speed (ninja-speed!) that the ingredients hovered in the air in between them, Ayame began preparing bowl after bowl of this most perfect food.

The broth was liquid gold, the noodles were at the perfect firmness, the dumplings large and hearty, the pieces of cabbage just at that right texture that was still crunchy but not tough, it was shivery bliss for him to sip the heat and goodness and chew the...

* * *

"Hey, hey, there's still fifteen pages more!"

At a table in a McDonald's, in some district of Tokyo, there sat two boys who could not have looked more different.

One was a bit short and thick in the shoulders, with (dirty) blond hair and (watery) blue eyes that tapered enough to reflect his half-caucasian, half-Chinese heritage. The wild hair was long and flopped about the sides of his face and down his neck, but stood up in proud spikes up top. He wore camouflage pants with the bottoms ripped up, heavy combat boots a size too large, and a white t-shirt with a picture of two ninja fighting in front of a waterfall. His arms and torso showed the thick chest and slight paunch of a young man that alternated periods of serious weightlifting with utter sloth.

The other was tall, for a purely Japanese teenager - in other words, slightly shorter than the blond. This one though, could pass for a model. His slender proportions and delicate, angular features were almost feminine, if not for the wiry coils of muscle on his body that proclaimed to the world: I'm a serious athlete. His shirt and slacks were perfectly ironed, and his red power tie also made a statement of grim, intense practicality.

It was not in physical structure that they were most different, however, but in every movement and blink, every slightest expression of the face and gesture. Exuberant and hyper-energetic as though he could barely contain himself on his seat, the blond looked like he wished to shake the other... whose furrowed brow and narrowed lips said, plainly, 'Please get me the fuck out of here.'

"I'm not reading anymore," said the almost-model, pushing the sheets of paper back. "It's junk."

"Well, sure, I mean, it's just the first draft - "

"And come on. You're naming the main character after yourself? And you're putting Ayame in there too?"

With what he thought of as gravitas and dignity, Naruto replied, "Art is best when it imitates life."

"...That's why you're calling it Ultimate Ninja Boy Naruto? Because life, your life, is like that?"

Naruto rolled his eyes. "Well, duh, Sasuke. Obviously, I have to embellish. Who wants to read about some boring college kid trying to become a manga writer or novelist? Ninja are cool! They'd only be cooler if I could also make them pirates."

Sasuke put one elbow on the table, pressed his fingers against his temples, and closed his eyes. Overwhelming smells of greasy, cooking meat patties. Salt. The lard in the french fries. Spilled ketchup. The sounds of the door swinging as people walked in and out, chatting about the recession, about global warming, about that new Korean pop girl group that was all the rage and stealing air-time from local Japanese idol singers. Outside, the sounds of cars driving by. Every time the door opened, he could smell exhaust in the air. Crowded fastfood dive, crowded city, crowded country. He wanted to be anyplace but where he was.

"What? You got a headache or somethin' dude? It's all that coffee you drink. You should really try this new holistic diet..."

An exaggerated sigh of long suffering escaped Sasuke. It did nothing to end Naruto's stream-of-consciousness discourse on the benefits of wheat grass and watercress soup.

...Diet seemed to be working though, Sasuke noticed. And he must have been working out again. Naruto's spare tire was disappearing once more, and his t-shirt was stretched more across his back and chest than his gut. Which meant that Naruto was in one of his 'inspiration' moods.

"Fuck it. If it gets me out of here faster... And you, you want me to read this? Shut up for a bit. Or I'll just happen to spill my coffee on your shit," he lifted his cup over the sheets and tilted it, the black gunk coming perilously close to the edge.

The other boy settled down and beamed a grin of such intense brightness, it almost burned out Sasuke's eyes. Or made it feel that way. In that way, at least, he had to admit that Naruto really was like this wish-fulfillment counterpart.

Another sigh, and Sasuke reached for the next page.

"Oh, oh, it's so great, it's time for the first fight scene!"

"What did I just say?"

"...What? I'm being quiet, man, nobody else looking this way even. I'm the soul of the shadow! Unnoticeable! Totally! I run like, 'wssshhhh,' like the sound of leaves on the wind!"

"Man, I really will pour this on your shit."

"..."

* * *

Kaboom!

An explosion sent broth spilling out of bowls and onto pants and feet! The shaking ground upended chairs and spilled pots! Shrieking food stand attendants and hungry food court customers were flung off of their now food-spattered feet!

The devilishly handsome but nefariously evil monster tengu-man appeared! With his demonic super-vision powers, he made all the bystanders scream. They were paralyzed in terror, trembling in their nice business-kimono-casual-wear. The cold horror of his glare sucked the courage from their hearts and made their knees weak, caused the colors of the world to fade and every happy memory to grow ever more distant.

"Haha, fool boy! I'll take your girl from you! And the Ninja Principal will let it happen! Because even he hates you! You and your dark secret!"

"No! Never, Sasuke! I'll beat you yet and become Freshman of the Year! I'll be the best Ninja High School student ever!"

But, surrounded by a glittering aura, Naruto stood up from the harrowing power of the EVIL Sasuke's eyes, undaunted. For Naruto was protected by one thing alone that was beyond the corruption of such things. He was protected by the ultimate sacrifice and love of his dead parents -

* * *

"Hell no!"

Sasuke nearly slammed his hands into the table. Just barely, he got a grip and avoided spilling coffee and sending the dregs of Naruto's fries and ketchup into the air.

"What? It's awesome dude! Admit it."

"Naruto."

"Yeah?"

"Are you hearing the words coming out of my mouth?"

"Yeah."

"Do you remember who it was that lent you a box-set Harry Potter collection?"

"Yeah!"

Sasuke started to roll his eyes and stopped himself. He would die before he started picking up all of Naruto's overdone gestures. It was bad enough that he'd picked up the foul language.

"Don't you see any, I don't know. Similarities?"

"Yeeeeeaaah?"

He could just tell that the other did not. At all. Why were they friends again?

"Change it. I'm not reading another word of your draft until you do."

"Change what?"

"No magic protection from a parental sacrifice. No special happiness-destroying look of doom. For god's sake, put some thought into this world of yours - if you're going to write it, don't just throw in every first thing you think about! Like this fight scene of yours..." Dark eyes scanned the eye-searing details briefly before closing to spare his brain further exposure. "What the hell is ninja-like about it? You got two guys screaming at each other and powering up and then blowing shit up! What the heck happened to the childhood friend while all this violence was going on? And if it's some kind of ninja universit - "

Naruto sniffed. "Ninja HIGH SCHOOL."

"Look, even that's out. There's already a Ninja High School comic. No."

"What? Don't be like that stuck up creative writing prof of ours - "

"Hatake-sensei is a great teacher. And he's won the Tezuka Award."

The glares between them were intensifying as they only could between friends that went over the same arguments again. And again.

"Kakashi's just a lazy pervert who got lucky once and scored a bestseller with some artist chick whose good looks got as much attention as her drawings. He hasn't written a damned thing since then! I can write ten thousand times better!"

"You've entered a hundred, no, a hundred-and-seven writing contests since elementary. You made me enter with you each time. You. Never. Won. EVER. Not against other grade school kids, not when we were in high school, not in the two years you've been dragging me to your Creative Writing courses! You haven't even gotten your own father to read through a single one of your short stories!"

Sasuke bit his lip. Maybe that was a bit too much.

Naruto's fists were shaking. He was practically expanding as adrenaline flooded his blood, and blood flooded his muscles. The veins popped out along his biceps, crept up his bull-thick neck. He folded his arms across his chest and looked away, out the window, looking both larger than he actually was, and somehow smaller, like a little boy pouting.

Clean scent of lilacs coming between them. It cut through.

"Well. I can see I came at a good time," interjected a gentle voice. The owner of the voice, a tall girl with waist-length brown hair, set her tray down at their table, and sat. There was a salad on the tray, a Diet Coke, and McNuggets.

She ate slowly, unperturbed by the simmering atmosphere. She reached over and took the printouts from Sasuke's trembling hands, and started reading in between nibbles at breaded chicken and not-quite-crisp lettuce leaves.

Both boys said nothing and tried not to look at the girl, and especially tried not to pay attention to every "Hmm," "Ah," "Oh," giggle and exclamation from her pouty lips. After reading it once, she took two pens out of her shoulderbag and started scribbling furiously in the margins. Some entire paragraphs, she encircled in red and marked with an 'x' while some lines were undelined in blue and a few passages got marked with a rare smiley face.

"Your ramen girl's description doesn't look anything like me, Naruto-chan," she said, grinning. "Not that I mind. This long beak of a nose I've got wouldn't translate well to a manga."

"Childhood friends that are girls must always look hot. It's one of the laws of storytelling."

That got a scoffing "Feh," out of Sasuke, but he held any further comments in after a look from Ayame.

"The parts in red are things that are... ah... a litle too inspired by other works, or need more, um, thinking through," she said carefully. "The blue parts are good!"

"Oh! See, Sasuke? I got talent, I got -"

"A whole lot of red on those twenty pages."

"Now, now," Ayame said. "There's a fair amount that's a lot of fun in there. It just needs polishing. And Naruto."

"Yeah?"

"You want to make this a battle manga, right? With Sasuke illustrating?"

"He has to win one of the monthly OrigFicFicNet forum contests with an entry first, before I'll do anything like that," Sasuke declared. "That was the deal."

"Well, one of the important things about a battle manga is the combat mechanics. You have to make that different. There's been hundreds of ninja comics. You have to make something that other people haven't yet - something that follows simple rules, but can lead to complex outcomes."

"But that's hard! Every fricking thing's been done already!" he moaned.

"If you're only writing when it's easy," she said reasonably, "can you really beat your father?"

Naruto's eyes feverishly scanned back and forth across the pages. In a small voice, he muttered, "So, uh, no cribbing from Harry Potter?"

"No cribbing. You're not going to do a Harry Potter doujinshi. You want to have the top spot on the New York Times bestseller list and also have the top serial in Jump, right? Ultimate Ninja Boy Naruto needs to be ultimately original. It's okay to have the classic hero archetype and the rival and the childhood friend and an unrequited love, but you have to do it differently, and you have to do it in a world that's only yours."

"Y-yeah."

She smiled at him and squeezed his shoulder. "So you have to listen to Sasuke too. After all, when you worked together, you placed fifth in that national contest, right? And Sasuke... take it a little easier on him."

Both boys nodded contritely.

"Bye!"

"Bye, Ayame," they chorused.

When she left, the two glared at each other.

"You have to win the next OFFN contest," Sasuke said. "Or that's it. It's almost time. I'm in France for a year on the exchange program, soon. If we haven't started on anything together in the summer, I'm not doing anything with you long-distance over the internet."

Naruto chuckled, "Why Sasuke, it sounds like you want to break up with me." He pawed playfully at a shapely, linen-clad thigh.

"Knock it off! No pretending to be gay. That was old when we were still in high school."

They both sighed then.

"She had to bring up that Nimagex contest."

Sasuke sipped his coffee, nearly sprayed it out. It had gone cold the hour before.

"What the hell happened to you, Naruto? You used to pull ideas out of your ass like a machinegun burst, and your writing... it was really something. Now everything's like something else I already read!"

"I..."

Sasuke stood up and grabbed his gym bag. "This little talk took way too long. I still have to work out at the track. Dude... I'm serious. You have to win the next one. Or that's it. I've been waiting on you to make a real story for too long. Heck, your Dad... he writes me all the fucking time asking me to get you to switch to journalism."

"Where's the geezer now anyway?"

Sasuke leveled a cold glare at Naruto. "Your father's doing important work. Right now, he's doing research for a piece on the situation in the Middle East. He could get blown up by a suicide bomber tomorrow. Return his fucking calls, man."

Naruto ignored it all. He stood up and raised his fists theatrically. "I'll definitely win the next one. Then we'll get a one-shot in Akamaru, and then serialized in Jump!"

Sasuke's somber expression cracked into the slightest smile as he shook his head. "Start with winning a little contest online first."

Ultimate Ninja Boy Naruto? It would never sell. ...It was too bad though. He wouldn't have really minded a ninja character named after himself.

* * *

Naruto skipped dinner, skipped a shower, and refused to sleep.

That night, in his tiny apartment, he did nothing but think, type in a few tentative revisions on his laptop, delete them, and type in some more. He tried hard to remember all the things he used to read that he liked and what it was in them that he liked... and what he desperately wanted to do better.

What did Ayame say? First things first. The world and the battle mechanics.

Stupid Sasuke.

So, not a Ninja High School. What? A Ninja country? A whole country full of ninja seemed, like, crazy. That would be like, if everyone used ninja for everything! They'd be like ordinary soldiers... And then other countries would have to have them too. What would the balance of power be like if everyone's got ninja? He was originally going to have them have their own secret, separate world... but he could hear Sasuke's disdainful voice muttering about cribbing from Harry Potter. A whole _world_ of ninja?

And how would they fight? Just martial arts and swords and stuff? Every battle manga had that. He didn't have it in himself to write a really gritty story with lots of blood and dirt to make realistic hand-to-hand combat work. He didn't think Sasuke would like drawing it either. Anyway, to make it popular, they needed big stuff! Something that would demand big special-effect-ish drawings of explosions and weird techniques and stuff! That's why he was thinking magic but... again, no Harry Potter. And ki blasts, ugh - "Who did you borrow Dragonball Z tankobon from? That's right, me," Sasuke would say.

"I can't outdo other people at their own game," Naruto said to himself, "if it's not also my game."

A little martial arts though... that would be a requirement for it to be a ninja manga. But what else? Tricks? He wasn't a mystery writer, he couldn't write a convoluted spy drama about politics and intrigue in some historical period with lots of serious conversations about intelligence and big army battles like in Romance of the Three Kingdoms...

The gears spun in his mind. Creaking.

"Fuck all!"

He stretched back in his chair, almost spilling out of it.

How had this seemed so easy before? Once, he hadn't even needed to think about writing. He'd just sit at his desk and it would spill out of him, through his fingertips, and onto the screen, complete, whole, like wassname of that chick stepping out of Zeus' fricking forehead.

His eyes glanced around his room. Landed on a Yoga manual he'd borrowed from Ayame, next to his bed. He'd borrowed it thinking it might help his performance in bed. Not that he had anyone to perform with these days...

"Ninjas doing Yoga and Pilates," he cracked up.

Still...

He popped open a browser and started rummaging around, barely thinking.

"Chakras..." he murmured. "Hmm..." But how would they do magic? Wait, what was it ninja would do in the comics - the thing with the hands...

Click, click, click.

"Theories of the Chakras, by Motoyama Hiroshi." Hmm. Something about complex hand gestures, energy and breathing.

Pretty magical, he thought. The gears started to spin a little more loosely...

With one window open where he typed away on the manuscript, he kept glancing back at a browser tab on his left. The OrigFicFicNet forums. Full of righteous bastards and trolls saying shit about every little thing. But if he followed every bit of their well-meaning and not-so-well-meaning advice, he knew his story would turn into the same generic crap that reproduced itself, fission-like, endless self-indulgent author rants or raw high school blah or artsy and incoherent literature student homework assignments. He needed something more...

Not just more than they were. He needed something better than when he used to be good himself. Deep inside, he heard Sasuke's voice, nagging him about the crap he would do - it had been there since they'd somehow become friends scrapping outside the army base in Okinawa. He knew Sasuke was right, that he'd lost something.

Since his mother died... writing just... was... different.

Less spontaneous. More research. More mechanical. More about the work, the craftsmanship. More about editing and revision. Reading writing books. Reading how-to-guides. Had he really been trying to be better, to learn? Or had he just been trying to fill up the hole where he was terrified his gift had vanished from?

He paused in the middle of typing some junk about performing ninja magic with the hands.

Screw it. He couldn't write trying to cater to every phantom out there. He needed to make this an excellent story. He. Needed. To. Win. Whose judgement did he trust best anyway? Ayame's... and Sasuke's.

He would write the best story that they could enjoy, the three of them together, and forget the fuck about the OFFN reviewers.

The keys rattled away. His eyes burned, tired. His neck was stiff. He really needed to take a piss. He just kept tapping at his keyboard.

At dawn, he attached the file to an e-mail, and sent it to the only two people who could stand him these days. Then, almost running, he groaned when he got to the little toilet of his apartment and relieved two very pressing urges.

Outside, it was dawn.

---

End chapter one

---

AN:

Yes, it's more junk from me. I know, I should just continue one of the unfinished fics I have here.

See, thing is, GNO and Naruto: Berserk both require a lot of planning and thinking and revision. It takes me a lot of hours to get things done for those fics.

Meanwhile, I am 10-15,000 words away from finishing the rewrite of my original novel. I need to finish that in January, because I'll need all of February to do one last polishing revision... And in March, I submit and start collecting the rejection slips.

But it's driving me a bit crazy squeezing out the best quality stuff I can do for my complicated scifi world. I needed to do some easy, relaxing writing.

This story is inspired by Bakuman, but isn't actually a crossover. It's also easy to write. This chapter was done in less than three hours.

So, yeah. This has more chance of being continued than the other stories. Don't count on it though - my focused writing is all going into my original stuff. This is therapeutic writing, and thus will only update when the mood strikes.


	2. Chapter 2

**Ultimate Fail!**

Vibrating rumble between his legs, wind in his hair, smell of the coastline: asphalt, seaweed, saltwater.

He leaned into the curve. Pushed the engine coming out onto the straight line to the beach, felt the power throb, pull him backwards.

Seagulls called to him. Gray skies. Nobody else around.

The wet sand caking around his boots left tracks. He made a game of it, tried to place his feet to make it seem like two people were walking side by side.

Sigh.

He sat on the sand and watched the waves coming in.

He took a cigarette from the crumpled box in his breast pocket, tapped it to pack the cheap tobacco. Lit it and puffed. Awful taste, cheap brand.

His cellphone fired off some Korean tune with lyrics he didn't understand.

"Yeah?"

Pinning the phone against his shoulder, he unzipped his backpack, took out a bottle of vodka, unscrewed it.

"I'm at the beach, that's where."

Took a sip, felt it burn its way down. The good stuff was like water. This was not that. This had a chemical taste to it that stung long after each swallow. He had some more. It hurt less than hearing the words on the phone. And more.

"I'm not coming to see him off. Even if I rode at a hundred fifty kph, I wouldn't make it."

The sound of her voice was soft, but it was sharp all the same. He distracted himself with memories. Summertimes spent watching scenes from classic anime. What did this place remind him of?

"It's not like he's dying, Ayame. He's just going to France. He'll eat some lousy frog food, hang out with good looking Euro-girls, and then the year will be up before we know it."

It reminded him of KOR. Kyosuke pounding on drums, thinking of Madoka. Concentrating. Loathing himself, wanting her. She was walking along a beach, and just like that, Kasuga Kyosuke was there, his drum set sinking into the sand.

How Naruto wished he had powers too. He always had. The world was boring, and harsh, and utterly normal. People who didn't deserve it went up, people who didn't deserve it fell low, and being mean or being good seemed to have nothing to do with which person got cancer.

"Eh? A webcomic? That's... Nah, maybe I'll just keep fine-tuning things. Really? He's serious?"

Turn Ultimate Ninja Boy into a webcomic first? Well. It would be easier than trying to do real submissions for the serial mags. And it wouldn't cost much money. A swig. Two long pulls that screeched down his throat.

Ugh, what a step down. What good was it anyway? He couldn't even beat out a bunch of nobodies on a forum, couldn't figure out his audience, couldn't figure out what was popular. If he couldn't do it for such a tiny subculture, how was he going to write something that would suck in millions of readers?

"No, of course I'm not giving up."

More horrid vodka. His head was already spinning, and he stretched out onto the sand. Unbuckled his helmet.

"All right, all right, I'll e-mail him something for a 4-panel strip. Fine. Yes, it will be in his inbox before he gets to France. Tell him to get on the fucking plane already, I can hear them calling his name."

He shut the phone off, and would have taken another sip of the vodka, but found that at some point, listening to Ayame talk to him and pause while she tried to force Sasuke to take the phone, Naruto had set the vodka down. It had rolled onto its side and spilled out onto the side.

Well, that was fine. He was already good and drunk. With his eyes closed and the sea in his ears, he thought of other worlds, better worlds, and drifted away.

* * *

"Here you are."

He didn't have to open his eyes. The pounding headache did not ease up. If he sat up now, he might vomit. So he just stayed there, with grit in his scalp. He could still hear the sea, and pretend to be unconscious, or dreaming.

Sand shifting.

"Ayame-chan was really worried about you."

"Mff. Nothing to worry about."

He could picture her sitting next to him. Red highlights catching the moonlight. It was night, right? He thought so, from the chill cutting through his riding jacket and trousers.

"You're just that sort of guy, you know. Everyone worries."

"Nobody worries."

The sounds of a vacuum seal being popped, plastic sliding against plastic. Coffee wafting down to his nose, making his stomach clench.

"There's one here for you when you can stand to sit up."

"How did you find me, Haruno-san?"

"Please. This is where you always brought me."

Foil crumpled and uncrumpled.

"I'm eating a BLT, just so you know. There's also an extra one of those. But to get that, you have to tell me why."

"Why what?"

"Why did you give me pink hair? I mean, really."

"The most important girl in a comic has to have an exotic look."

"So you choose pink?"

Soft fingers slid through his tangled hair.

"You've got sand all over you, Uzumaki."

"Yeah well, I like it here just fine. Thinking of opening a coffee stand right here, on this beach."

Time whispering by, while she ate her sandwich and drank her coffee. He hadn't seen her in a year, but still tasted her lips when he woke up in the morning. Kisses he didn't have a right to anymore. Shadows. Arguments. Yelling.

"I never said we couldn't stay friends, Naruto."

"I can't believe Ayame called you and showed you the story. That traitor."

"Well, she's still my friend, you know. We talk about you sometimes, still."

"Hah!"

Naruto reached down, pulled at his legs, sat up awkwardly. How long had she been sitting next to him? It wasn't just night... Glancing down at his watch. 1:32 am.

"Your coffee's cold."

"That's fine."

He drank down the bitter blackness, wolfed up the sandwich. Barely tasted either. He tried not to look at her straight, he knew it would get his heart pumping, and there would be no point to it.

"You remember how you got me to go out with you?"

This time, she leaned back and stretched out on the sand.

"...Yeah. Pretty stupid, now that I look back. A dumb story, with characters named after you and me."

"It worked on me, right?"

"Yeah, I guess it did."

"So don't give up yet."

He supposed not. Webcomics. How did they work anyway? You couldn't make money off of that... but he supposed it was one way to get some practice. And it was technically simpler than laying out and plotting a real manga, so it would be possible, maybe, to do all the work with Sasuke by chatroom and mailing files back and forth.

They both stood up and walked to their respective bikes. His rusty clunker looked ashamed next to her slick black racer. A BMW. Beautiful. It made him a little upset, ghosts of arguments about her parents' money.

"Sakura."

"Yeah?"

"I'm getting kicked out of the U."

"Yeah. I know. Ayame and Sasuke knew too."

"I guess they would have. I wasn't really trying too hard to hide it."

He couldn't stop himself from looking at her ass when he heard the creak of the leather against the seat of her bike.

"Here."

Slip of paper in his hands - he almost dropped it when the wind tugged. An address, a time. He only knew one person with a business address in Tsukishima.

"You should get there on time."

"How'd you get him to agree to this?" Naruto asked. "He doesn't like me."

"He needs a cheap assistant, and he still owes me for lending him the money to start his restaurant."

She road off ahead of him. The paper was clutched tightly in his hand. His eyes were still on her ass, getting farther and farther away. Streetlights. The wind picking up, the sea crashing against the shore. Years passing by, where had they gone?

---

---end chapter


	3. Chapter 3

**Ultimate Mediocrity!**

It started so fast.

Hands dragging him to an alleyway. They tore at his clothes. Pipes beat down, cracked his hands, his elbows, his back, his legs. Trying to fight back accomplished little. Too strong. These were not the average street gang that thought they were doing society a favor - these were ninja.

Dirty puddle stained with his blood, the foul water splashed past his open lips.

_Demon_, the called him. They were snarling.

Curled up on his side, he just tried to protect his vitals.

Then they pulled down his pants. A cold, hard length of pipe spread his buttocks. Shoved up into him, and he found it in himself to scream, despite the busted ribs.

* * *

"Hey, hey, it's okay. You're alright."

"...Anko?"

"You were having a bad dream."

He slid out from under the comforter, walked to the bathroom. A glass of water went past his lips. More water splashing his face. Sweat dripped down his naked skin. When he looked back at the bad, he felt calmer, took in the sight of her curves catching the moonlight through the window, as she yawned.

"You should see someone for those."

"Hey, you don't see anyone for your bad dreams."

She sniffed.

"My bad dreams from childhood trauma are quite resolved and done with, I'll have you know. Any bad dreams I have now are ordinary nightmares that come with the job, killing and torturing, that sort of thing."

He stretched his arms up, popped the joints in his neck. The way her areolae crinkled around her dark, stiffening nipples in the cool air always did something primal to him. The pounding in his head was fading, and he felt blood being drawn lower.

"So, anyway. You got more to teach me, sensei?"

"Oh, I'll have more to teach you for years yet, young student. But don't you have your genin exam in the morning?"

"I'll pass it easily this time. I swear."

Lips against lips, teeth and tongues. The thick weight being drawn into soft, clutching flesh. The little gasp she'd make during that first inch in always made an animal of him.

* * *

He strapped on special belts, around his waist, his ankles, his wrists. Anko said that they increased the effect of gravity, or something, which did not make sense to him because all sorts of other stuff should have happened if that's what they did. That should have changed the way objects fell in his proximity, should have altered the properties of his hand-to-hand combat, especially for grappling. It should have forced his heart to work harder to pump the blood, should have caused all sorts of problems for his internal organs. And his sense of balance should have been messed up too. But the belts worked. They made moving harder. They forced him to push his muscles. They made pushing chakra around to make his movements faster an instinct.

He went through a series of footwork drills. His sweat was dripping down as he practiced quick step-ins, retreats, swaying, side-steps, circling.

He heart her approach in the trees above their little clearing for five minutes before she got there. That's how loudly she was cursing.

"You flunked again," she said. "Ugh, can't believe it. What am I giving you all this extra training for?"

"It's that punk teacher. He's cheating me. If you'd just break into his office and look at his student records you'd..."

"I've already done that, and it's true. He is. But I don't have the authority to do anything. It shouldn't have even come to the point where anything he did could affect your passing or not. He's not your only teacher. What did I tell you about studying for the history and politics tests?"

His knuckles smacked against the rope of the makiwara. Rhythm. Left, right, combinations flowing through his hands.

"I'm disappointed in you."

His eyes widened.

"Awww, come on, Ankoooo-chaaaaan... There's always next year."

"No, Naruto. I'm seriously pissed at you. There's no way I can have you on my team now - they're going to just fill in the slot with someone else. I've postponed it as long as I could."

Naruto's fist glowed with a faint green outline. His index and middle finger curved into hooks, tapped into the makiwara gently. There was smoke, then the ropes smoldered, darkened, broke up and fell into stiff lengths that were crumbling away. Two holes in the board were visible, were expanding up and down along the fibers of the wood.

"I know. I'm... I'm sorry. I just find the textbook stuff so boring."

Her fist slammed into the top of his head, sent him to his knees.

"Don't let moron combat types tell you that the book stuff is useless. If all you know is how to fight, that's all you're good for, a brainless tool. How you gonna be the big boss that way? How can you work out diplomatic policy if you don't know anything about your own country's history, nevermind the history of your neighbors? How can you manage the political backbiting among the clans if you don't know how they came to be?"

Wincing, teary-eyed as he rubbed at the growing bump on his skull, Naruto complained, "Okay, I got it already!"

"No, I don't think you do. You still keep bugging me about fancy techniques instead of how to improve the basics like your footwork. You ask for sealing techniques when your calligraphy is still crap. And your first instinct every time someone confronts you is to fight - you will only have enemies like that."

"Yeah, yeah! I get it! I'm stupid already."

She crouched down to where their eyes were level. "Don't let the ass-wipes convince you of that either. A kid your age would not be able to learn my Viper Hand if you were stupid. And I don't let idiots into my bed either. Naruto, you're just lazy."

"What? I work totally hard! I train all the time - "

"You train in the things you like. You don't put in the same effort in the things you don't like, even if that's where you need more effort."

Anko stood up and straightened out her coat. The movement was one she'd practiced for years - it made her breasts shift just so, and her hips. She noted how Naruto's eyes failed to latch onto the shadow of her nipples visible through the chain vest underneath. Good, maybe he was taking it seriously. Now to make sure it would stick.

"I'm going to put you to the test. Will you take it?"

"Of course!" he yelled.

She shook her head. "There you go again. You don't even know what it entails."

"I'll do it! I can read you a little too. It's important to you. So it's important to me."

"This is the test. It's going to take you patience, and it's going to take you time. You and I won't be meeting again for a while."

"What? But... but..." his face twisted up. It was almost enough to change her mind. "Please. I'll read the books, I promise. I'll do everything you say. Please don't."

"I've been holding your hand too much, spoon-feeding you. And some of my colleagues are starting to suspect things about me, about us."

"But - "

She patted his cheeks. "You already agreed to it, remember? Anyway, it won't be forever. Look... you're so young, Naruto. You don't even really know what you want yet, and you're getting too attached to me. If you still want me when you make chuunin, we'll see, alright?"

His clenched fists pounded the dirt. "I'll make genin next year, I promise. Then I'll pass the chuunin exam first time."

Anko laughed. "Very few people make it the first time. You know who make it the first time? Intelligence types, analyst types, not charge-in fighters."

"I'll change! I can do it." His eyes were ablaze. It was just that sort of thing that had pulled her to him, started whatever this was between them. Something that made him seem like so much more than another orphan wanting in on the ninja lifestyle.

"That's a man's promise," she said. She kissed him a long, slow while. "And that's mine. Until we meet again, shorty."

She vanished in a cloud of dust. He stayed there for an hour, lips parted, eyes closed, trying to memorize every detail, every bit he could. The scent of her, the way it felt to embrace her around her coat and feel the steel beneath through the leather. Other memories. Every memory. He had to make them last...

---

end chapter

---


	4. Chapter 4

**Ultimate Chat!**

"You realize of course, that we'd have to rework this completely for a mainstream battle manga."

"Whatcha mean dude? It's not _that much_ dirtier than, like, Tenjou Tenge or Aiki."

Keyboard clattering away, slight static hiss over the headset.

"To make it more popular, we'd have to make Naruto younger."

"Oooo, shotacon! That would - "

"That's not what I meant, idiot! I mean, no sex. Especially not with a hot older chick with a chainmail vest and no underwear. And by the way, do you know how such armor works? You *need* padding underneath - it won't just pinch, the rings can be driven into the skin with a serious hit."

Naruto handwaved it off. The webcam picked up Sasuke's agitation.

"Psh. Nobody cares about realism _that much_. We can just say it's magic or something. In Lord of the Rings, didn't that little munchkin have a chainmail vest that was supposed to be super comfortable or something but still tough? Let me have chakra-charged chainmail without padding for the big breasted hottie."

On the monitor, Sasuke put his hands on his forehead and leaned forward. His face came too close to the webcam on his end, and Naruto's screen was filled with giant Sasuke displeasure.

After ten deep breaths, Sasuke got a handle on himself.

"Speaking of big-breasted hotties. Who the hell is Anko?"

"What? Can't I make up a character? It's one more thing you and Ayame keep bugging me about."

Sasuke gave him the _look_. "Don't bullshit me. Who's Anko? And won't she be pissed off at a webcomic of herself having sex with a teenager?"

More Naruto handwaving. He imagined that with his hands that close to his webcam, all Sasuke would see would be his giant palms.

"That's not her name. It's this bitch who keeps coming to Chouji's place. Ugh, what a cock-tease. I'm pretty sure she's a prostitute of some sort. And your character design doesn't _look _like her. It's fine. I'm just using her for inspiration. Quit looking at me like that, I'm not that big a dick. No one will know it's based on her."

"..."

"Honest. I've been shifting our character designs to look less and less like the real people, right?"

Naruto clicked through his work folder, pulled up the scanned, inked, and colored images.

Fictional Naruto had gotten a bit younger than in their initial design. His hair was cartoonily spikier. He was not as buff. And his clothes were hideous - Naruto let Sasuke get away with that design change since his currently Frenchified pal was quite offended by, and just barely accepting of the Uchiha character's betrayal set for their future story arcs. Fictional Sasuke had also been youthened somewhat, and become slighter and was also burdened with hair that would require about a pound of gel in real life. Of course, that Nabiki chick looked nothing like Anko... not the hair or the face, and he had little idea of what the bitch looked like naked, but he doubted she was nearly as muscular as their psycho warrior amazon assassin. Then there was Sakura with the pink hair, Chouji'd gotten fat instead of being the powerfully muscled guy that scowled at Naruto whenever they happened to cross paths in the gym... Ayame was the least changed from her real life counterpart.

"Man, they're already looking like brats," Naruto sighed. "You really think we'll need to make the characters younger yet when we finally redo this story for a real manga?"

"Look, that's so far away. Let's just concentrate on making the webcomic, right? Anyway, for the real manga, I'm thinking that at some point we should put in a timeskip to age them from where we'll start 'em."

Timeskip? Naruto chewed it over. Felt like lazy writing to him. That was the solution of someone who was too lazy to make the parts he didn't like and make them interesting to the readers. Well, like Sasuke said, that was for the distant future still. No timeskip for their webcomic.

"Anyway, I already sent you back my comments and suggestions for the frames. You've gotten better with the perspectives on the fight scenes."

"Yeah, I'm looking at it now," Sasuke replied. "I'll get started on the final clean up and coloring. Doing this has gotten much faster since I bought a tablet."

Naruto exited from the character design folder, and once again pulled up the latest draft strip Sasuke had sent to him. It was looking good. As the weeks had gone by, Sasuke had noticeably sped up the rate at which he could do the art. And while the stylistic quality had only improved slightly, the obsessively perfectionist artist had gotten better with selective focus on the content, and steadily eased up on superfluous details that were too small to be caught by their readers anyway, while spending more effort on what the eye was drawn to.

Sasuke must have been spending hours practicing with fight scenes. Knowing him, he probably spent time copying his favorite scenes from both Western comics and manga, as well as experimenting with his own stuff.

Still... Naruto often found himself wondering how this webcomic experience would translate over. When they finally did manga, they'd be turning in work on paper, not digitally done images. And most of Sasuke's growing experience with colors would almost never be used since manga were mostly black and white except for the occasional special colored releases.

Naruto ran his fingers through his hair, noted the greasy feeling on his fingers. He needed a shower. He always felt like he needed a shower because of working at Chouji's okonomiyaki joint. Took a sniff at himself, and smelled onions, grease, burned batter, and sauce.

"What are you sighing and frowning about now?" Sasuke barked.

"Well... just looking at a graph of our traffic."

"Yeah, so? I told you it would take a while to build up a following. We're actually doing better than I expected. And we've started getting e-mails from some weirdo Americans that say they'd like to translate it for us. They'd host the translations on their own server, and split ad profits with us."

"I just don't like it that the strips that get the most hits are the ones with cheesecake bits."

Sasuke burst into laughter. An instant of lag caused the sound to be out of sync with his image, and the effect was eerie. It was night in Tokyo, but day in Paris, and the light streaming in onto Sasuke's face was almost too bright.

"You're complaining about that? You're the one that absolutely refused to let me cut out all that smut with Anko."

"It was important set-up stuff. It wasn't my idea to have special nude pin-up images that only viewers that cough up a donation to the site get access to."

Sasuke wasn't even looking at his image. He was hunched over his tablet, making final corrections. His shrug was dismissive. "We gotta bring some money in somehow."

"Maybe this would be easier if we went with an out-and-out hentai webcomic."

"That wouldn't give us much as much experience that will help with mainstream."

It was an old discussion between them.

"There's really an American group that wants to translate our crap?"

"They like the story," Sasuke said, shrugging again. "Bored college kids. Their Japanese isn't bad either, just a bit stiff, like out of a textbook."

There was the sound of a door opening, and a woman's voice.

"Oh, hey, ah, I gotta go, Uzumaki. I'll finish this later."

Naruto frowned. He could hear the French bird entering Sasuke's room while Sasuke started saving and backing up their work.

"Hey, Sasuke, I'll be your slave for a month when you get back if you point the webcam at your bed and leave it on when you and that Brigitte girl get - "

"O, mon amour!"

Naruto could only make out her torso as she entered the camview from the side. She was standing behind Sasuke's chair, and had her hands on his shoulders. Long fingers. Tight black sweater. Really first-rate rack. Luscious, pendulous swaying, bra-free. That bright Parisian sun seemed to burn through the sweater, had Naruto imagining that he could see her naked tits through the wool weave.

"Hell no," Sasuke said, as those fingers crept up over his cheek.

The image cut out and Naruto was left with the ghostly sound of some French stuff and giggling and other sounds that were suspiciously like smooching before the connection was cut completely.

Naruto looked down at himself, having a rather disproportionate response.

"Crap. I really need to get laid."

---

end chapter

---


	5. Chapter 5

**Ultimate Bonding!**

It had been a tough fight. Except for Sakura, their whole team came within a hair's breadth of dying. The worst kind of mission - one with bad intelligence. The opposition was not what they had anticipated, the surrounding politics, everything was a fuck-up.

One would almost suspect that they had been sent on this mission to get killed.

Thankfully, they were also more than their team profile suggested. Sometimes, it was better to be lucky than good.

Afterward, it was a relief to get the ninja pigeon's message back from the Big Boss approving another mission that would give them a paid vacation of sorts. They were to aid the little island state of Wave in designing its defenses, setting up a training program for a militia, and negotiating with other settlements for the building materials that would allow Wave to take advantage of its bridge and the geography that ought to have made it a prosperous port. A whole two months with little chance of combat, and time to lick their wounds.

So why was it he was facing his genin teammates, blades drawn?

"This is really f'ing stupid," Naruto stated. He kept circling outwards, slowly increasing his distance from them.

"I want Zabusa's sword," Sasuke said. "I got stuck full of needles and was put in a near-death state. Injuries, I might remind you, that I got from protecting you, Uzumaki."

"But, but I won! I beat that hermaphrodite man-girl! Doesn't that count for something? And Sakura, what do you even want with the sword anyway? You're our infiltration-type..."

"It's worth a fortune. I'm a greedy bitch."

"Haruno, I'll date with you if you let me have it."

She turned to him and said, hip-cocked and unfettered boobs bouncing under her dress, "Why my dear Uchiha-chan... I'll just let you buy it off me when I get it!"

With that, the explosions began. Dirt was flying, the smell of burning earth and grass was pushed around, born on pressure waves. Riding the blasts too, were little iron balls of shot that didn't look impressive, but would put a hole through somebody easily. Sakura was cackling madly as her gun-magics blasted away, tearing up the environment. The sand of the beach was kicked up into a small dust storm by her indiscriminate and profuse fire, which was far louder than the sound of the water crashing against the rocks. Shots into the sea sent plumes of white foam up and the air was soon filled with mist and sand and gunsmoke.

Why was she their infiltrator again?

Somehow, sliding between the explosions and shrapnel, Sasuke was coming, a dark blade cutting through the air, broken sword tilted to the left and behind in a reverse-grip. He threw one knife and it became twenty, and another, and another, a hail of bright steel.

It was times like these that Naruto wished he had not, in fact, shifted all his efforts to becoming an analyst/tactical type, because of his aching desire for the ultimate lay waiting on the other side of the chuunin exam. In the intervening year, he had not picked up any more new techniques other than the ones he'd stolen off of the Big Bad scroll during the Mizuki incident... while Sakura had figured out a number of her family's gun-based techniques and Sasuke had developed tremendous speed, sword skills, knife and shuriken moves, and a versatile spread of combat magics that did a little of everything, ranged offense, defense, and self-buffs for close-in fighting.

Naruto was being tumbled around, deafened. This was not a winnable fight for him. If he had just made the effort to study the situation further rather than getting hammered, he would have been able to predict that this was going to happen, and he might have been able to prepare the field.

He grunted as a bullet went through his thigh, and another zipped by his ear.

"Okay, okay!" he yelled, unable to hear himself. "I give up! You two can fight it out."

Apparently, Sasuke was also partially deaf, because he was still coming at Naruto. Sasuke would be the kind of guy to target the weak first.

The evil red eyes were bright and locked on Naruto, and then dark whispers and flashes of steel were upon him. Sasuke could throw faster than Naruto could see.

The spikes and blades penetrated his shirt, but not Naruto's hurriedly manifested defense. One of the last techniques Anko had taught him before leaving him ate through a quarter of his reserves as his skin hardened, and rose into overlapping iron-hard scales. The flexible, light armor was only as strong as his will.

Desperate dodging and footwork put him just clear of Sasuke's first succession of slashes, resulting in his jacket being slashed up and sparks from the blade clipping his scales rather than serious injuries. A spin around his left foot removed his body from the path of a follow-up knife thrust, and then the explosion from another of Sakura's chakra-boosted blast rounds separated them, sparing Naruto from decapitation.

Once again sent flying through the air, clothes ripped up, bruises forming under his armor, Naruto snarled, "Okay, fuck you both!"

He swiped his fingers along his thigh where the bullet holes were. Blood was still oozing out between the scales. The red drops burned bright as his fingers twisted through the mudra-patterns. Then he flung them forward towards his team-mates.

Each blood drop shimmered, became the heart of a perfect copy of Naruto. A dozen of these clones for each of his foes, while Naruto made himself scarce by walking the shadows, another technique stolen from the Big Bad scroll.

Their fingers burned bright green with the acid energies of Viper Hand, which he would normally never use in a friendly match, but then again, this had gone far beyond what he'd consider to be a friendly match. The air smelled of salt-mist, blood, dirt, and the sour acid stench of his only combat technique.

He hid himself away behind the lava boulders scattered along the shore and released the Dragon's Scales technique. Running and stealth had become his best skills. Slipping away and just watching, waiting, thinking.

What was this three-way fight about anyway? It wasn't about a sword that Sasuke didn't really want because it was too big and clumsy. It wasn't about money that Sakura didn't need because she'd just collected on a share of the bounty for the Demon of the Mist.

Their pupils were dilated, they were panting, cheeks flushed... and damned if he wasn't imagining that Sakura's nipples were showing through her sweat-soaked top.

Naruto got it then, and sighed, thinking it was pretty thick of him. Another flare of chakra through the open wound in his thigh sent his commands out to his clones, and though they maintained Viper Hand, they stopped trying as hard. Their fingers tore clothing, ruined weapons, and destroyed ground, but did not scar the skin and wither and paralyze muscle.

He wished he'd never told Sakura the truth when she asked him what turned Sasuke on. Now, they had these huge fights with blood spilled and everything as a form of particularly violent foreplay.

And did they include Naruto in the fighting as some weird kind of invitation? Naruto shivered. He hoped not. He really, really had liked Sakura once. Sharing her with femme-boy? That would be really, really weird.

He took off just as the last of his clones were blown up or chopped up, and his team-mates were wrestling each others' weapons out of their grips, bodies pressed close.

Yeah, and who knew his ex-girlfriend was an exhibitionist at heart?

_Why don't you show her just what else you can use all your clones for?_ His inner passenger cackled madly. _It would be quite the orgy._

With great satisfaction, Naruto enjoyed the bitch's yowling response to his sudden immersion in the icy waters of the winter sea.

He turned on his back and floated, kicking his feet, sending him farther up the coast away from the horny couple.

Why didn't they just go on dates like normal people, and get it on in their hotel room or something? Instead, they insulted each other and fought, and Naruto had to resist the urge to barge in and defend her as though he still had a right to.

Well, he supposed everyone was crazy anyway. He'd once thought it was good to be honest, to say what one meant, reveal what one knew and asked about one didn't. But that classroom lesson had turned out to be backwards. They were supposed to have an outer appearance, and outer behaviours, and then layers that hid away who each person was inside. Knowledge was power, fighting was deception, and so ninja drank side by side with their most hated enemies, and tried to kill the ones they loved most.

If you liked someone, you couldn't show it, or they'd be a target. If you wanted someone to be a target, that's who you buddied around with, and collected intelligence on.

Words meant something, actions meant something else, and beneath that, layers with motivations that were not what they seemed. Someone who looked angry wasn't, someone who looked happy could be miserable. A couple that was walking along, hand-in-hand, grinning and blushing... What had he been thinking back then, believing Sakura loved him too, when she was really just scouting out his best friend?

He really wasn't meant for this world. He didn't like false appearances. If he liked someone, he'd rather smile in that person's direction, and not scowl.

The bleeding had stopped by then, a little gift from his spluttering, angry companion.

He missed Anko terribly.


End file.
